(The following story by Paul Nussbaum appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on March 4, 2010.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA has decided to abandon the familiar R designations of its Regional Rail lines, effective in July.
The agency will instead identify them according to the ultimate destination. The R8/Chestnut Hill West, for example, will become the Chestnut Hill West line, and the R8/Fox Chase will become the Fox Chase line.
SEPTA officials said visitors and infrequent riders sometimes got on the wrong trains, confused by different lines with the same R designation.
SEPTA will also get rid of the color codes linked to each line on its maps and schedules. Henceforth, the color of all Regional Rail lines will be “a bluish-gray,” spokeswoman Jerri Williams said.
The other significant change will be the renaming of the R6/Norristown line. It will become the Manayunk-Norristown line to highlight Manayunk’s popularity and distinguish the Regional Rail line from the Norristown High Speed Line, also known as the Route 100 trolley.
Long anticipated, the changes were approved Friday by SEPTA general manager Joseph Casey but were not announced until yesterday.
Currently, SEPTA’s 13 train routes are labeled R1 through R8, except that there is no R4. And there are two final destinations for each R route, except for the R1 airport line.
For instance, some R3 trains terminate at Media or Elwyn in Delaware County. Other R3s run to West Trenton. Regular commuters know the difference between the R3/Media-Elwyn line and the R3/West Trenton line, but SEPTA says passengers unfamiliar with the system can easily end up on the wrong train.
The R designations were created when SEPTA completed the Center City commuter tunnel in 1984, connecting the former Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad systems. Instead of terminating at Suburban Station or the Reading Terminal, trains could operate through to the other end of the line. An R7 train could run from Trenton to Chestnut Hill East, for example.
But today, most rail trips don’t run from one end of a line to the other. Only 33 percent of weekday trips are end-to-end runs, according to SEPTA.
Many trains go to Center City, then to a rail yard to be sent out on another line. And 19 percent change R designations as they leave Center City without stopping in a yard.
Vukan R. Vuchic, a University of Pennsylvania transportation professor who was a creator of the R-designation system 25 years ago, criticized SEPTA for getting rid of it. He said he was concerned that SEPTA would use the change to alter how it operates the train system.
He said the agency never tried to fully use or make passengers aware of the through-travel potential offered by the Center City tunnel.
Williams said SEPTA would not change rail operations.
“This is just a rebranding. Service will not change,” she said. She said new schedules would indicate which trains ran through the tunnel to the other end of the paired lines so passengers could ride all the way through if they chose.
The changes will take effect July 25, when new schedules are issued. But riders will notice changes before that, as SEPTA begins to cover up R designators on signs and TV monitors.